I stayed away from aros during months because my old computer was simply not enough powerfull to provide a nice AROS experience.

I was using a pentium 4 1.6ghz, nvidia (agp) fx 5600 128mo, 1Gb ram. I wasn't able to use opaque, and windows with decoration were slow even without it. I couldn't play videos without frameskip, and classic amiga gaming was slow and choppy sound.

It seems that Aros (and ICaros) progressed a lot these last, let's say, 6months. So I'm wondering what kind of computer is the perfect aros machine now, or at least, what kind of main hardware parts should I use for best experience.

For laptop/netbook ?

For nettop/entry level computer ?

For production/gaming computer ?

For laptop, it's simple, you can give models references. For desktop computers, it would be cool to have a list of prefered hardware parts :

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Amiga 1000, 3000D and iMica Silent and NVidia version running latest Icaros.http://www.imica.netPlease support the Amigas future, this year is 25th Anniversary lets make it special.http://www.amiga25.org

Well, I don't know what is the bottleneck in my system, but it's definetly too slow to be useable more than for a few testing. The last benchmark tests we did here when I was an active member (both on forum and on my aros computer!) finished to kill my motivation, seeing my poor results.

These days, motivated again by the recent achievements (Icaros 1.4, Odyssey) I found another motherboard, amd processor based, maybe it could be better. I don't know what kind of (cheap) agp video card I should choose too.

It's why I created this topic, because I believe a lot of people are in the same case.

edit : Imica is based on intel GMA and atom, correct me if I'm wrong. It seems that it runs nice, indeed, seeing your youtube videos. I'll share the link to the guy who asked me what kind of machine should he buy for aros.

A netbook like ACER Aspire One runs quite fast with AROS. Browser the web is fast. Play video is fast as long as you don't go for very high resolutions. Old Amiga games runs perfect.with Janus-uae. Even Quake 3 runs fast enough. I done lots of videos that will demonstrate this. Look here.

To say something about supported sound-cards, lots of hd-audio works out of the box.

If you like to buy soundcard go for the old but still good Soundblaster-live or for real high end soundcard. ESI juli@ envy24.About the ESI card you need driver not found on AspireOS or Icaros. I will try to remember to include it in next AspireOS release.

For GFX most Nvidia cards will do fine. Stay away from ATI, they will only work in VESA mode.

Performance can suffer greatly depending on core logic chipset + i/o controllers. Your 1.6ghz p4 you mentioned has around same ballpark cpu speed as intel atoms, which some people seem happy enough with. While obviously slow compared to desktop based systems made in the last 8 or so years with the right supporting hardware it could be a better experience than it appears youre having.

Unfortunately it can sometimes be tricky to recommend specific hardware, as the difference in revisions of even a same product can sometimes be enough to cause different behaviour on 2 different systems that appear, on papr, much the same. This is a pretty extreme scenario though, but it can occur.

Personally I swear by i945 based s775 systems + core2 cpu. Gives orders of magnitude times the performance of your current system (even if it was running optimally), and are dirt cheap. Video hardware wise my gf9600gt works very nicely. Performance is in the upper bracket for gallium+mesa based systems, and they seem to have a high rate of performing as they should (9800 based boards and gf 240/250 hardware often steers away from refernce designs and as such can have unexpected issues). A geforce 8400gs is another that usually behaves well under aros and/or nouveau/gallium/mesa. Its a pretty weak card in comparison, but still achieves roughly 60fps at 1920x1080.There's no absoulte truth or certainties with desktop based hardware for aros, but its usually pretty safe to buy hardware that has no unique enhancements or customisations vs. more mainstream options (ie. complies to manufacturers reference designs).

If your budget is less than the $100 or so that putting together a s775+core2 will cost a higher end athlon xp 3000/3200+ with nf2 based mobo provides a decent experience and can be obtained for under $50.

AGP support is quite limited in AROS (controller hardware I mean, not the range of agp carsd that are supported). You're definately better of with pci express if its an option and not just because of it being a faster interface.

Personally i swear on every AM3(+) based system. Especiall if you need a cheap but powerful "AROS" system you can use a Sempron D140.. it gives you the single core power of an Athlon X2 64.. trust me it compares easely under AROS with every core2 based machine.

I am actually testing the new AresOne with IcAROS, but i may switch to AspireOS... (Maybe Paolo can need some help to fix some rough edges in IcAROS)

I am testing it with an D140 @2.8GHZ and with onboard GPU (nouveau ahoi!)..The system boots Winblows in under 4sec. IcAROS takes a bit longer but AspireOS and old Broadway are faster in this category..

It is not always about CPU but the whole chipset combination is the key. There is one drawback with the new board.. its Lan - NIC isn't supported (yet) but we can add a card for this matter.. All in all it will be still cheaper than the existing AresOne and a new driver bounty or paid job shouldn't be any problem in AROS land : )